


Reunions

by queermoraghid (TheDoctorIsIcecube)



Series: Torna: The Golden Flufftry [1]
Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Major Spoilers, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorIsIcecube/pseuds/queermoraghid
Summary: When Malos picks Jin up off the street, he takes him back to the inn and someone unexpected is there.





	Reunions

“Evening, Ornald.” Jin struggled to pay attention to Malos’ words; being inside in an occupied area had fast become an uncomfortable and unfamiliar sensation for him and he was mostly focused both on the very welcome warmth and the few strangers he didn’t know.

“I’m not having you bring a beggar in off the streets,” the man at the desk said.

“He’s not a beggar,” Malos said, his smooth tone accented with a clear threat. “He’s a friend who’s just travelled here. He’s walked in the rain and I’m worried he’s going to get ill. I’ll be putting him up in my room, and considering what I’m doing for you, I don’t think I need to add anything to the room cost.” 

Ornald just grunted and waved them past, and Malos rested a hand on Jin’s arm to lead him into the back of the inn and up a flight of stairs. The place smelled like fried food and a heavy stench of alcohol, but Jin couldn’t bring himself to care one bit. The warmth was just too good. 

“It’s only two flights up,” he said. “Once you’re up there, you can get some real rest.” Jin had honestly no idea why Malos was being so...civil. Or what Malos was doing here, seemingly already recovered from the beating he’d received not all that long ago. Or maybe it had been ages and the time had slipped away from him.

He just nodded, and followed Malos to a door down the end of a corridor. Malos pushed the door open, revealing a room with two beds, a ratty sofa, and- Mikhail? What?

Before Jin could even express his surprise, Mikhail jumped up off the bed, his eyes going wide. “You? You’re still alive?” For a moment, the lights flickered.

“Woah kid, take it easy,” Malos said, holding his arms out in front of him. “This is Jin. Don’t know exactly what happened to him yet but I’m not going to pry and you’re sure as hell not going to either. Let him rest.”

“But-” Mikhail’s attempt at protest was shut down by a stern glare from Malos, and without even being asked, Mikhail slid off the bed he’d been sitting on and went to go lie down on the sofa instead. Under normal circumstances, Jin would probably have volunteered to sleep on the sofa himself, but right now he was too tired to do much except fall back very gratefully onto the bed.

He was too tired to even have the time to attempt to comprehend what was going on. The child who had travelled with him until Then was now here, with one of the people who had tried to destroy everything and who was also meant to be dead. And Malos had picked him up off the street and helped him. It felt like his world gone mad had just managed to get even stranger and he didn’t understand how.

But right now he just wanted to sleep. He wasn’t sure how safe he felt around Malos, and hell, Mikhail had somehow potentially managed to make the lights go out for a second so Architect only knew what was going on there. But Jin put all that out of his mind, and closed his eyes. There would be time enough for questions in the morning.

-

When he woke up, it wasn’t morning. It was evening. The sun setting was causing orange light to filter into the room as he opened his eyes. He still felt like shit, but that was a constant these days. At least he was alive and vaguely comfortable now. The sleep had done him good.

Still groggy, he swung his legs over out of the bed. When he looked around the room, he saw Mikhail staring at him, wide-eyed and pretty much just as Jin remembered. “You’ve been sleeping for ages,” Mikhail said. “Are you feeling better?”

“A bit.” Jin rubbed his eyes, looking Mikhail up and down. No missing limbs, or missing eyes, or missing...anything, really. He looked remarkably good for a small child who had somehow managed to escape a warzone. “How come you’re here? With Malos?”

“It takes explaining,” Mikhail said. And then he looked away. Clearly explaining that he didn’t want to do, then. “But stuff happened. I guess the same happened to you.” Jin could tell that Mik had a million things he wanted to say but he was holding back. He always had been a little insular like that.

“Yeah. ‘Stuff’ is one way to put it.” Jin fell silent. He wondered if Mikhail knew that Lora was...gone. He refused to say dead, because she wasn’t really, not entirely, she was just- not here. “Are you going to at least explain what you did with the lights last night? Was that you?”

“Actually, that was two days ago,” Mikhail corrected. Wow. He really had been asleep for a long time. “It’s part of the same long explanation. I don’t really know.” With that, he stood up and turned around, looking out of the window at the other side of the room. There was something different about him that Jin was still too exhausted to detect.

“Where’s Malos?” Mikhail just shrugged, motioning vaguely outside of the window. Jin nodded, then wordlessly turned around and left the room. He came back five minutes later with what the innkeeper had grumpily informed him was enough Grumbird casserole for four people. If Jin remembered anything about Mikhail, it was that he had quite the appetite. And right now, so did he.

“Malos keeps trying to cook,” Mikhail said, eagerly taking a serving from Jin. The sombre Mik seemed to have disappeared, replaced with the rather more lively one Jin had become used to seeing in the past. “He’s not very good. But it’s better than nothing.”

“Yeah? When I’m less tired, I’ll cook for you, instead of just buying food off the nearest street vendor.” That was one thing Jin could say for sure that he was good at, even though he hadn’t had much practise for a while. He sat down on the edge of his bed, digging into the casserole. Ah, that was good. Cheap, and definitely not the best thing he’d ever eaten, but good enough to hit the spot for now.

“I missed-” Mikhail cut himself off and didn’t say any more, shovelling food into his mouth every time Jin even looked up. He clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Jin liked to think he knew a thing or two about children, but something was off with Mik. Something was very off, and it was throwing his already whirling, jumbled mind for a loop.

A few more mouthfuls of food later, he woke up enough for it to hit him properly. He could feel his own ether flow, and he could feel another flow, weaker and almost...disrupted. There was another blade in the room, but not a healthy one. “Mik,” he said cautiously. “We’re the only two here, yes?” The only other option was- well, it didn’t make any sense.

“Uh-huh,” Mik said, his mouth still full of food. And if the two of them were the only ones here, then...no. Maybe there was a blade in the next room over, or downstairs, or anywhere but here, and that’s why it was weak. Or maybe Mikhail was just particularly sensitive to ether and his sensitivity disrupted it somehow. But Jin knew better. He knew to trust his senses, and if he really focused on the second flow of ether, he knew where it was coming from. 

He set his spoon back in his bowl, and leaned down a little to look Mikhail in the eyes. “What happened to you? I can feel the ether flowing around you, so don’t try and brush this off. Come on. You can trust me.”

“It’s really complicated and I don’t get it,” Mik said immediately. “But it hurt. And I don’t really know what happened. But it’s like Minoth but the other way round. A-and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jin nodded. He wanted to know, needed to know what had happened and who had done...this to Mikhail. Architect, he was just a kid. He couldn’t even comprehend what Mik was trying to explain to him, but he gathered it was bad. “You have a core crystal now, then?”

Mikhail nodded, looking distinctly unhappy about that fact. Jin patted the bed next to him, and Mik hopped up. Jin wasted no time in putting an arm around him, pulling him close. This kid clearly needed comfort, whatever awful things he’d been through. “It’s over now,” he said. “Whatever happened in the past, we’ve reached a point for moving on to a new stage.”

Mik nodded again, and Jin could hear him sniffling even as he turned his face away. Though he could still see the light of the sun outside the room, the room itself had gone very dark. That certainly made a lot more sense now he knew what was going on, at least a little.

“I thought you were dead,” Mikhail mumbled after a while. “Is...is Lora okay? If you’re alive, she is too, right?”

Jin hesitated. What was he supposed to say here that wasn’t going to make Mikhail burst into floods of tears? Being a flesh eater was no easy thing to explain to a small child, even if he knew what had happened with Minoth. “She’s...no. She didn’t make it out of the destruction of the titan. Those maggots from Indol.”

Mikhail just nodded, not saying anything for a while. Jin supposed there wasn’t really much to say. Lora had been very important to Mik in that time they’d spent together, and grief...Jin knew exactly what grief felt like. It gnawed at him with every passing moment.

Eventually, he spoke up. “If you’re alive, does that mean you…” Mikhail trailed off, waving his hands in a vague sort of gesture, but Jin knew exactly what he meant. 

“Yes,” he said quietly. The fact that her body was frozen in ice in a giant box hidden away in a storage unit was not something he wanted to get into right now. “Look- the war was hard, everyone lost someone. Lora was...she was brave to the end. And she’d be so happy to see you alive, kid.”

“I wish- never mind,” he said. Jin understood, though he didn’t know what Mikhail was going to say. They all had things they wished had gone better, now. People who should have made it. People who they wished hadn’t. The world wasn’t fair anymore, but these were small victories, and Jin wanted to cling to every single one of them.

And even though he was run into the ground and dependent on his former enemy, even though Mikhail had been harmed to the point of his humanity being stolen from him, this was a victory, in its own way. Because he was alive. And Mikhail was alive. And where there was life, there was always someone to move forward and remember the things that had been lost. And, most importantly, someone to seek vengeance for those who could no longer do it for themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed :) if you liked (or disliked) this, please leave a comment to let us know!


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